Final Fantasy Friday: Creepy Caverns

Hat trick of creep this week. Bonus: it rhymes, too! Also reminder that this will be the last Final Fantasy Friday post until December. I’m going to make an official announcement post about what’s going to be suspended throughout November, but I figured a reminder in the final one isn’t a bad notion either.

I’m currently recovering from anesthesia. No, I didn’t get bionic limbs (though I did ask for them), just something weird but simple that required your favorite Narcissist to be knocked out. Never fear, I woke up even more beautiful and amazing than ever, and when I returned home, there were offerings to my greatness at my door. The peasants do love me ♥

I usually try to tie the week’s question with something going on, and I suppose waking up from brief, medically induced unconsciousness could be considered coming out of a dark cave so….

What’s the scariest dungeon or locale?

Hm, let’s do like I did last week and figure out some contenders per game. I’m too sleepy and busy to use pictures so you will have to utilize your

I’m aware of the irony of claiming I have no time for pictures, while posting a gif.

Final Fantasy IV – The Moon. Dat creepy music tho (I talked about that particular factor last week). The “surface” cave system with the alien blob enemies don’t do much to help tame the eerie aesthetic.

Final Fantasy VI – The Sealed Gate. Not the cave mind you, the Gate itself, that portal that just seems to be floated menacingly in the distance. The Esper world isn’t creepy at all, but they may want to look into redesigning their vestibule (or not considering it’s a gigantic keep out sign). Bonus points for Doom Gaze, though he’s not a location, but rather a monster that shows up in a location: the sky.

♫Broken promises♫

Though this is obviously Amano’s artwork, the 16 bit rendering isn’t far off!

Final Fantasy VII – Any scene involving Jenova. No, I’m serious. When you first see it in the Nibelheim Reactor. Actually…fuck that, the “eye nipple” scene when Cloud looks through that glass. Also the other pods in the reactor, the one Sephiroth looks into, telling “Cloud” that Hojo put people into them in order to turn them into monsters. The basement of the Shinra Mansion, not even necessarily the library, but that hallway where you find the room with Vincent’s coffin. The first time you see the Emerald Weapon and it’s just a gigantic eye that opens then closes again. I nearly shit my pants the first time I saw that. The Shinra Tower when you’re following that trail of blood. The Great Northern Cavern. An alien crashed there millennium ago, an alien that feeds off of the life energy of planets, and now it’s manipulated/corrupted “son” has returned to that spot in order to finish the work started all those centuries before.

Final Fantasy VIII – Tears’ Point. Holy shit. I hate that location. I don’t know what it is about it, the creepy cube/pods that react to the Lunatic Pandora, the statue that “weeps” stone tears when it cracks. I just looks like a foreboding place, and the music doesn’t help. There’s a draw point there that I always rush to go to, because there’s something not right about that locale.

I wonder if it’s supposed to parallel the pods in FFVII…

Final Fantasy IX – The Iifa Tree. Corrupt the Tree of Life and give TSN nightmares. I think the worst is when you get to the bottom and you see what looks like Lifestream below and then the boss just pops up, and he’s s hoffirying looking mother fucker o.O

Does he kind of have a Jenova look to him or am I just to super obsessed with FFVII? Not entirely, but the basic form?

I really need to apologize to all of the later Final Fantasy lovers, because I always get too tired at this point and/or can’t think of specific examples. I’m sure FFX has them, but I can’t dredge one up. I know XII has them and that one I do know, but it’s more of a more nebulous memory where I ran into this terrifying enemy that kicked my ass. I know who I can count on to talk to me about XIII 😉

My pick is…

Tears Point.

Seriously, this is terrifying. It’s beautiful, but…terrifying.

Surprised? Final Fantasy VII had so many eerie places in it. For VIII that paradigm wasn’t as prevalent, but Tears Point always unsettled me whereas FFVII is generally unsettling by design. VIII is, too, but it’s less blatant with it until later on.

Give me your creepy Final Fantasy locales or scary video game ones in general. There is no need to send me links to pics of Mother Brain thank you very much, though “she” would go more with last week’s post. I should do one of these for Zelda actually *thinking*

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13 thoughts on “Final Fantasy Friday: Creepy Caverns”

Suprising even myself, I’m going with a location from 15. It’s also a spoiler so I’m going to put spacers in.
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Thinking back about 15 one of the biggest disappointments for me is that we didn’t get to spend more time in it’s world of ruin. It was dark, depressing, creepy, and had a lot of interesting implications for it’s world and characters.

Bionic limbs sound so cool though… I hope it was nothing serious and I’m glad you are doing okay!

You can always count on me to babble about XIII, haha. The big creepy cave in it is called Mah’habara Subterra, but I found it more cool than creepy, honestly. The Ultimate Dungeon in Lightning Returns was kind of creepy. Avoiding spoilers, it’s an optional area with the hardest battles to conquer.

The FFIV moon caves get my vote though since it is my most recent Final Fantasy memory. Especially the cave with Bahamut.

If they wanted to cobble me together with some twigs and glue, I think I’d be okay with that also lol. I think it’s a “when it rains it pours” type of deal, but I shall persevere.

That reminds me of the Deep Sea Research Center in FFVIII! How could I forget about that o.O That was creepier than Tears’ Point. It was the “ultimate” that reminded me, because it’s where you can fight the Ultima Weapon, but it’s getting there that’s just unsettling. In the beginning there’s this force field that will make you fight a monster if you move while it’s on, and there are muttering voices you hear during it. Then of course anything deep sea is just terrifying now because I’ve seen SOMA, but even before that I didn’t like that part.

Those moon caves are creepy, but oddly enough the music helps forestall that for me! It’s more adventurous sounding than scary, which really helps the mood.

I feel like I need to put in my vote for the Phantom Train just out of tradition at this point.

Although out of that list, Tear’s Point would be my choice, too. The location was just so bizarrely surreal. Going into that felt like it was built by a madman. It wouldn’t be too out of place in a Cthulhu Mythos story.

That part was so sad in VI (say THAT three times fast), but I was a bit disturbed whenever you had a ghost in your party and you went to the menu screen. Their “face” or rather lack thereof was quite creepy.

Right?? WTF was with that location? I think the part that makes it even creepier is that I don’t think it was purposely made to be creepy. There were no monsters there. It wasn’t a dungeon, but I always hurried through that part. Agreed about Lovecraft and that deep sea research center, too. Let’s not forget the Ragnarok before you get rid of those terrifying aliens. It’s a good thing Squall was so in control. I would NOT be okay in any of those situations.

I truly hope you’re ok TSN!!! You already mentioned the creepiest place for me: Shinra Mansion by far. That place is a freaking haunted house. There’s even a vampire in it! Okay, Vincent’s not quite a vampire, but come on. Look at him haha. Anyway, the whole place reminds me of the creepy mansions in Resident Evil.

Right?? That place is terrifying both surface wise and for what terrible stuff happened therein and what terrible secrets were divulged.

There’s a really weird vampiric mine to Vincent though! I still haven’t put my finger on what exactly it is, but he is kind of the game’s vampire. He’s already moody-broody, he has that “dark side,” and the icing on the tombstone is he was locked in a coffin after being injected with something that would make him unable to die, so he is kind of undead I suppose. He’s kind of a cross between a vampire and a werewolf due to the Chaos thing, though I’m pretty sure that’s an abomination in some werewolf/vampire lore lol, though I don’t think Vincent would disagree 😉

For me it’s just generally ff7. Creepy game. Creepiest bit is probably following the trail of blood when you wake up in the shinra building and find your cell door open. First time I played that bit I just had no idea what to think and felt very, very tense haha

I agree with you 100%, and even wrote an article called The Seventh Is the Darkest, because I wholeheartedly believe that FFVII is the darkest of the Final Fantasies along with being the most closely aligned with current events/our world, which has some interesting implications. There’s definitely a ton of mind fuckery hehe. It was the first Final Fantasy to ever make me feel uneasy or ever scared at some moments, and it’s one of the core stories that brought me to the realization that all decent fantasy has some horror motifs going on. FFVII is obviously NOT horror, but it has quite a few horror tropes in it, and of course Fridge Horror and Eldritch Abomination is in full effect. I figured since the entirety of VII fits the bill (and I always use it because it’s my favorite), I’d look at some of the other ones, and Tears’ Point just always left me with an eerie feeling. IX is that game that has a deceptively cute veneer (the big headed characters, upbeat protagonist, Prince(ss) and Pauper paradigm, etc.) that gets darker and darker the deeper you go. That Iifa Tree was a creepfest, and the truth about the Mist was no picnic either D: